UK Guy Trademarks Famous Gov't Slogan, Goes After Others For Using It

from the keep-calm-and-carry-on-suing dept

During World War II, the British government apparently created a slogan and poster that read Keep Calm and Carry On:

While it had been mostly forgotten, apparently the poster was "rediscovered" in a used bookstore. The reason it was forgotten, apparently, was that this poster was designed to be used in case the Germans actually invaded the UK -- so it was never widely released. While government produced works are the kind of thing that should be public domain automatically, in the UK they do have Crown Copyright -- but that expired in 1989. So the image is in the public domain. Not surprisingly, this has spurred on a bunch of folks to start selling merchandise with the poster on it, including the owner of the bookshop who found it back in 2000.

And yet... another guy has gone out and trademarked the phrase and is seeking takedowns on anyone selling competing merchandise. In the video at that BBC link, the guy who now owns the trademark, Mark Coop, really comes across as having a massive sense of entitlement for taking something in the public domain and locking it up:

"Having quit the day job, and put my life and soul into this, and build it up and then rely on it for my livelihood, I have to protect my own interests. You know, and faced with the risk of losing everything you've worked for, I find it hard to believe that other people wouldn't do the same thing."

Wow. First of all, Coop isn't at risk of "losing everything." He can still keep selling the same products. The trademark itself seems highly questionable, since the phrase first came from the government in 1939 and was used popularly in the UK in the early 2000s before Coop went into business. The fact that he quit his day job to do this is meaningless under trademark law. What about the others who did the same who are now being blocked by Coop? Coop goes on, condescendingly:

"Had I not built this up, they probably wouldn't never heard of it. They wouldn't, you know, have ever even seen it. So, I think they're jumping on the back of what I, essentially, came up with."

Except, um, he didn't come up with it. The UK government did. And others appeared to have begun selling it before he did. So what claim does he really have here?

"Having quit the day job, and put my life and soul into this, and build it up and then rely on it for my livelihood, I have to protect my own interests. You know, and faced with the risk of losing everything you've worked for, I find it hard to believe that other people wouldn't do the same thing."

He quit his day job to become a trademark troll? Someone should've told him to "Keep Calm and Carry On" before he did that.

Re: Re:

Yeah, but wait. What you are saying is that he is an advance freetard, because he not only took something for free without respect to it's original creators, but also tried to come up with a way to make money with it.

Fuck me, if this was a pirate movie site you could would be praising him as a new age entrepreneur.

Re: Re: Re:

What part of the original article or Gabriel Tane's comment left you with the impression that either were suggesting the thing Coop was doing that was wrong was using the phrase and making money off of it? NO ONE SAID THAT.

Re: Re: Re:

The 'freetards' you so lovingly bathe with your sharp, witty devil's-tongue are all people who SUPPORT the creators... they don't like supporting the tyrannical distributors of those works, but they LOVE to support the people who make them.

What this guy is doing is taking something from the public domain, locking it up and insisting that people pay him for it.

Sorry if you think there's some kind of parallel to commercial piracy (you know... the people who produce thousands of copies of stolen media for the purpose of selling... not the downloaders who get it to watch/listen to on their own terms), but I guess you have to be wrong sometimes.

Re: Re: Re: Totally missing the point..

"Yeah, but wait. What you are saying is that he is an advance freetard, because he not only took something for free without respect to it's original creators, but also tried to come up with a way to make money with it.

Fuck me, if this was a pirate movie site you could would be praising him as a new age entrepreneur."

This comment shouldn't be flagged. It shows how incredibly stupid the trolls can be. The pirate movie sites DO NOT claim that the content belongs to them and then sue the movie companies for showing their content.

The guy is a genius really

With the current state of IP law, he can go after infringers for tens or hundreds of thousands of $$$ per infringement. By the time this trademark gets over turned, he will be set for life. Or perhaps the trademark doesn't get overturned because IP law is at the forefront these days and we all know without those laws, there will be no incentive to create. Or recreate in this case.

I think the problem here is that the UK trademark system is wacky. Essentially the government made a ridiculous promise to Mark Coop, that they would grant him a monopoly on something within the public domain. The fact this was done seems much more newsworthy to me than an argument between two ebay sellers.

Re: Jim_G, Sep 23rd, 2011 @ 1:01pm

Knowing the UK Trade Mark agency would most likely of rejected his application, he underhandedly registered with the EU Trade Mark community, who clearly donít know the significance this slogan has to the UK and the history behind the original image.

Trademark exists solely for the purpose this guy is using it for - and you're lambasting him for exploiting it for a business need.

Now once more with feeling...he's properly using trademark to trademark a phrase for his business...TRADEMARK DOESN'T CARE WHO CAME UP WITH THE PHRASE, So you're claim that the gov't made it up actually is completely irrelevant, but I guess that's never stopped you from making any stupid statements.

Techtards just want to bitch, whine and complain because this guy is using proper the proper techniques to secure a business model. WAAH!!!! Keep crying, then go surf 4chan.

To see why this isn't as black-and-white as it looks at first, imagine if this was the story of someone innocently selling t-shirts on eBay with the word "Gap" printed on them, and then being outraged when a big American company bullies them, claiming that they have a trademark on the word Gap. How dare they?! How can somebody claim to 'own' a word that's been around for centuries? (Well done, you just learned what a trademark is. If you're still not convinced, make it a story about selling computers with the word "apple" on instead...)

FWIW, I think there is a subtle difference here: even if he was genuinely the first person to come up with the idea of putting those words on a t-shirt, the slogan is doing more than just marking out the product as coming from his company - he's trading off the slogan's existing value as a recognisable phrase that people would enjoy having on a t-shirt. But it's certainly not a frivolous claim, and I wouldn't want to be the one arguing against it in court.

Overturning the trademark...

More info on this trademark dispute can be viewed here http://keepcalmcampaign.co.uk We are currently trying to overturn the EU trademark and an application has been submitted to cancel the trademark on the grounds that the words are too widely used for one person to own the exclusive rights.